IRobert Capa's iconic war photograph is displayed during the "Correspondents In the Spanish Civil War" exhibition at the Instituto Cervantes in New York. A Spanish newspaper has claimed that the photo -- that shows a Republican soldier at the apparent moment he was fatally hit in the back by a bullet -- was in fact staged.
(AFP/SunReel Media/File/Ivan Cortazar)

MADRID (AFP) – A Spanish Civil War photo by Robert Capa that shows a Republican soldier at the apparent moment he was fatally hit in the back by a bullet was in fact staged, a Spanish newspaper claimed on Friday.

"Capa photographed his soldier at a location where there was no fighting," wrote Barcelona-based newspaper El Periodico which carried out a study of the photograph taken in September 1936, the third month of the war.

The so-called "falling soldier" photo was not taken near Cerro Muriano in the southern Andalusia region, as has long been claimed, but about 50 kilometres (30 miles) away near the town of Espejo, the newspaper said.

To back its claim it published Capa's photo and others taken at the same location as well as photos taken recently near Espejo which show that the landscape corresponds to that of the 1936 photo.

The photo -- one of the most emblematic war photographs of all time -- has long sparked controversy, with Capa supporters defending it as authentic but some critics saying it was too perfect not to have been staged.

El Periodico said it based its study on an exhibition -- launched in New York in 2007 and now in Barcelona -- of 150 photographs taken by Capa in conflicts around the world during the 1930s and 1940s.

Born in Budapest in 1913, Capa went on to become of one of the most famous photojournalists of the 20th century. He was killed in 1954 by a landmine in Vietnam.